FROM A PERSONAL STANDPOINT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1708, 8 March 1888, Page 4

FROM A PERSONAL STANDPOINT.

The following, extract is from a sermon preached by Cardinal Moran of Sydney, on the Catholic Church of the paßt and the Irish apostolate in conuection therewith::• " Men now-a-days, when we'speak of the deeds of blood which marked that period, are disposed to look upon them as matters of imagination and tales of fancy. But'many of us know too well how stern was the reality of such facts. Four members of my own immediate family were sufferers for their country. Two of them were shot for being supposed to be guilty of treason, one in Kildare, the other on the fair green of Leighlinbridge. When the latter was bidding a last farewell to his fond mother, she said to him: " Have courage, my son, die a martyr for your country." Another had lots cast for his life. The fourth succumbed to hardship at the moment that the yeomen seized him, but his captors would not be content. They tore hia heart from his body and set it upon a spit, and roasted it at the fire. And, lest anyone may ihink that there is exaggeration in the statement which I have made, I will read for you an official letter written by the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis; and addressed to General Ross, one of those then in command of the troops in Ireland: *' The yeomanry," he says, " now take the lead in rapine and murder. The conversation of the principal persons of the country all tends to encourage this system of blood; and the conversation even at my own table, where you will suppose I do all I can to prevent it, always turns on hanging, shootingjburning, etc; and if a priest has been put to death the'greatest joy ia expressed by the whole company." Thus writes Lord Cornwallia on the 24th July, 1798. When this thirst for blood was in part satiated, then hundreds of devoted men, whose only crime was |their hatred of oppression and their love of their native laud, were sent as convicts to eat in sorrow the bread of exile on the shores of Australia.